P.H.D. In HHS

For our readers who also pay attention to other Nebraska-based news media, it may have seemed like a homecoming of sorts this week for a story that most Nebraskans would prefer to put behind them.

Instead, no matter how many times Governor Dave Heineman and the heavily conservative Nebraska Legislature attempt to sweep the political, economic, and personnel disaster that is the current Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services under the rug, the filth of failure keeps emerging.

The Department of Health and Human Services - also known as HHS - is back in the news for multiple reasons.

To start with, the Beatrice State Developmental Center - known to many as the BSDC - is back in the spotlight and again, the news isn't good. This time, multiple BSDC staff members were accused of abusing the Center's disabled residents, or simply ignoring abuse of BSDC residents.

According to state Sen. Steve Lathrop, chairman of a legislative oversight committee, the BSDC - and indeed, the entire Nebraska HHS - appears to be sliding into a pattern of cutting corners and overworking staff that got the HHS into serious trouble not that long ago.

If this sounds all too sickeningly familiar, this isn't the first time HHS has failed in its responsibilities of caring for some of Nebraska's most vulnerable citizens.

Understaffing, overcrowding, and abuse previously led the BSDC to lose its Medicaid certification and the Federal funding that comes along with it. The Department of Justice got involved, and the Unicameral set up the commission that Sen. Lathrop currently chairs to look into these charges.

Yet the abuse happened anyway.

We haven't even gotten to the HHS official in charge of Nebraska's failed child welfare privatization project, who is resigning at the end of this week. There's also the ridiculous HHS ruling on a new county jail construction project near Nebraska's capitol city. That HHS ruling could cost Lancaster County hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions of taxpayer dollars, to fix - even though neither the county or the state is responsible for the expensive construction screwup.

We will be the first people to tell you that government - when it's operated properly - is RARELY the problem, and is often the solution.

The Nebraska HHS, however, isn't even close to being operated properly.

HHS's biggest problem seems to be senior executives and managers who insist on blithely blowing past massive cost savings on their crusade to privatize the entire Department, and slashing costs far beyond the point of sanity.

Paying for an adequate number of quality employees could have alleviated many of the problems now facing HHS - and also Nebraska taxpayers. Improving on the state system for child welfare instead of trying to privatize the system seeing to the care of many of Nebraska's most at-risk children also could have saved Nebraska taxpayers a whole pile of money in the long term.

Instead, Gov. Heineman and many of our state senators have been trying to hide the inconvenient truths about how bad Nebraska's HHS system has become by flashing their P.H.D.s - Pile it Higher and Deeper - on HHS's problems.

It's long past time they should make an honest effort to clean up the mess they've made.